


Somnambulation

by biextroverts



Category: The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6347842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biextroverts/pseuds/biextroverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lady Glinda had a bad night, a night of shakes and regret and pain; she guessed it was the early signs of gout from her rich diet. But she sat up half the night and lit a candle in a window, for reasons she couldn't articulate. The moon passed overhead in its path from the Vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved back from the tall windows” (Wicked 404).</p><p>Or: In the aftermath of the Witch's death, Lady Glinda takes to sleepwalking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somnambulation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Femslash Big Bang 2016, for the prompt “dreaming of you”.

     Lady Glinda rose late in the morning to find the stub of yet another candle burnt out on the windowsill. With a delicate groan, she rolled her shoulders forward and back to ease the ache that came from sleeping overnight in the green wingback chair in the western parlor. She had no inkling how long she'd sat dozing there instead of in the bed, but in the chamberstick, the candle had melted down almost to nothing before something – a gust of wind, perhaps – had snuffed it out. She stood, rolling her shoulders once again, and went to close the window. Three stories below her, the munchkin gardener trimmed hedges into neat, perfect squares, and birds chirped in the manicured trees. The breeze brought the smell of sweet flowers, asphodel and heliotrope and zinnia, drifting through the window to her, and she closed her eyes and breathed in their fragrance for a moment before shutting the window and latching it tightly. With the glass between her and the world, she was enveloped in thick silence.

     She pulled an elegant silver watch from the breast pocket of her nightdress and read its face, which gave the time as nearly eleven o'clock. The metallic sheen of the watch chain pooling in the joint of her wrist stood out against nearly milk-white skin and blue-green veins. She ran the fingers of her free hand fretfully through her hair and made a little noise at the back of her throat before turning the watch over to examine her reflection in the smooth, clear surface. She looked infirm. She couldn't find much will to care. Perhaps she was, although the best doctors in Gillikin could identify no cause for her ailment.

     Glinda rang for a servant and returned to the wingback chair. Almost instantly, a smallish Gillikinese boy, no older than she had been in University, poked his head through the door to the parlor. “Lady Chuffrey?” he said, quiet and squeaky; timid. “What may I do for you, ma'am?”

     Glinda gestured listlessly towards the empty hearth. “Light a fire, will you –”

     “Laurence,” the boy said.

     “Light a fire, will you, Laurence?”

     “Yes, ma'am.”

     Laurence gathered wood from the stack beside the fireplace and set it where it belonged. Within several minutes, a healthy fire was crackling away. Glinda turned the wingback chair, previously facing the window, towards the fire. The heat was like a blanket, or an opiate.

     “Thank you, Laurence,” she said. “You're dismissed.” The boy scurried off, and Glinda closed her eyes, listening to the quiet, comforting noise of the fire and trying to empty her mind. Behind her eyelids, flashes of green danced teasingly in the corners of her sight. She gave a nervous little hum. She had been chasing that color in her dreams now for almost a season.

*

      Glinda padded down the stone hallway in soft-soled shoes. Long windows like those of some fortified castle broke up the wall at regular intervals, letting in bright afternoon sunlight, but Glinda knew in her heart of hearts that it was Shiz. It was not a building in which she had ever been in wakefulness – it was probably not even a real building, for such was the logic of Glinda's dreams. But she knew it well, now; at least, as well as one could know a building with an ever-changing labyrinth of halls and no apparent entrance or exit – not that the search for a way to leave the building was what brought Glinda back to it time and time again in dreams.

     She turned another corner; her feet ached something awful and she was becoming dizzy from the twists and turns she was taking. At the end of the long corridor before her, she saw a flash of green turn the next bend before disappearing from sight.

     “Elphie!” she cried out, but she could make no sound; the name came out only as breath. “Elphaba!” If she listened, Glinda thought she could just barely hear footsteps in the distance. She picked up the hem of skirt and quickened her pace; her own feet went _pitterpatterpatterpitterpatter_ on the stone floor. She rounded the corner. This time she was sure she saw Elphaba at the other end of the hall for a moment – there was that braid of lovely dark hair down her back, that terrible, shapeless frock she wore; the ghost of sharp, acerbic laughter drifted in the air, filling Glinda's throat with acrid desperation.

     “Elphaba!” Glinda cried again, soundlessly, “Elphie!” There was no response; she noticed for the first time that even birds didn't chitter outside the windows. The hallways were as silent as memory, or death; the only sounds were her footsteps and the footsteps of her friend, and she couldn't even be certain that those were real. “Elphie!” she called. “Elphie!”

      The sound of footsteps stopped. Glinda broke into a near run, her skirts gathered up in her fists, her feet pounding on the stone floor. She was out of breath when she reached the corner, but something in her heart buoyed her up. There was a lump in her throat, anxiety and hope. “Elphaba!” she called breathlessly, turning the bend to gaze upon her friend again. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

     There was no one there.

     The corridor was short; more of a room, almost, and a dead end at that. A breeze blew through one window and out the other and she could hear birds, now, distant as they were, but there was no sign of Elphaba. “Elphie,” Glinda croaked. A tear trickled from one of her eyes. She fell to the floor, still breathing heavily. “Elphie,” she said again, and it came out halfway between whine and moan, “why won't you stay? Why won't you come back, Elphaba?” The tears fell freely now, wetting the lap of her fine gown – she hadn't worn anything quite so showy since her college days. “Elphie,” she murmured, dropping her head in her hands, “Elphie...”

*

     Glinda woke with a start. The fire in the hearth was low now, nearly dead, and the moon was rising outside the window. Tears still pricked her eyes. She arched her back and stretched her arms above her head to diffuse the ache in her muscles, then went to the window to collect the chamberstick. She paused for a moment there, looking out at the full, yellow moon, like a spotlight in the sky. _Wherever you are, Elphie,_ she thought, _I hope you're happy. I miss you still, you know_. She nodded solemnly at the moon, as if it could convey the message, then to leave the room. She could feel the moonlight on her. _I've been dreaming of you, Elphie_ , she thought. _I'll always...well, nevermind. You know._ She closed the heavy parlor door behind her and, enveloped in darkness, she walked down the hall towards bed.

**Author's Note:**

> In the language of flowers, asphodel means “my regrets follow you to the grave”, heliotrope means “devoted affection”, and zinnia means “I mourn your absence”.


End file.
